Pages

Jun 24, 2014

The Under-Policing of the Nigeria Space

Image source: Th Nigerian Presidency

I search, online, the database of the Nigerian Population
Commission, NPC, for the population figure of the town of Vom Vwang in Jos
South of Plateau State, to no avail. Through other benchmarks however, one
could give a picture of how big or small the town is.

The town of Vom Vwang has eight secondary schools, each with
an average population of about 250 students. In the same town, there is the Vom
Christian Hospital which was founded by the Church of Christ in Nigeria in
1922. The town also boasts of a College
of Nursing and Midwifery. It is sad that a town of this magnitude has only four
police personnel.

It is very easy to see the under-policing of Nigeria on the
roads or highways. At a busy Junction, a female police officer directed traffic
one evening. It was a T-junction. She grappled with traffic from the north,
south and eastern ends. Some naughty boys down the road rode tricycles in the
wrong direction, a situation that would lead to a traffic squeeze. She wished a
colleague was around to handle the boys, but there was not. She couldn’t leave
her primary assignment to walk down the road and deal with the boys. Eventually,
the boys caused the stalemate she worked to avoid that evening. It rendered her
effort of the evening a waste.

In Nigeria, it is a cliché to see vehicles making violations
along the road. Vehicle owners drive across kerbs, along pedestrian paths in
the wrong directions, causing inconveniences for pedestrians and panicking
law-abiding road users. So long as the roads seem clear, some vehicle owners move
on when traffic lights “say” stop. These are all caused by the hasty and intolerant
culture of Nigerians and what is seen on the streets and highways is actually a
microcosm of what one finds in the general fabric of the nation.

Years
back, road users in Nigeria were scared of traffic violations, fearing the law
would catch-up with them. The lawful usage of the roads started fizzling out however,
when it became clear they could get away with their highway misdeeds, leading
to a culture of road madness and the sour ripples always tied with it.

Road offenders get away with driving crimes because there
aren’t enough police personnel along the roads or highways to discourage the
illegalities. If under-policing means that crimes are not sufficiently fought,
the forgotten plight of the force makes it even worse. The “I-don’t-give-a-damn”
posture of the authorities has created an ambiance where taking bribes to turn
a blind eye on criminal acts has become so entrenched that it is seen as an
acceptable custom.

It is also the reason why the officers often transfer their
traditional beliefs into the profession. Nigeria, a country of my birth and
which I love so dearly, is a theater of, sometimes, deeply hilarious drama in
which some police officers believe there could be crime scenes where the
criminals are invisible and fire visible and deadly bullets. At such instances, it is needless to engage
the criminal. Instead, you go back and just wait for the month-end to receive a
pay for crimes not fought. This represents an unquantifiable degree of
under-policing.

The Nigerian Police and its affiliates are exclusive
appendages of the Federal Government (FG). The FG recruits a handful of men and
women into the force and disperses them to the thirty-six state and the Federal
Capital Territory ( FCT) commands
across the country. Often, the only things that follow are the regular
entitlements of the recruited men, entitlements that often arrive famished due
to the rough paths the benefits often pass through. Since there are always
inadequacies of working resources for the men and women of the force, state
governments often shoulder these responsibilities, mostly the provision of
operational vehicles, despite this being the constitutional liability of the FG.
The rationale behind this generosity is in the knowledge that such goodwill
will only work to keep crime levels low in the donor states.

When Plateau State suffered a sequence of conflicts between
polarized groups, the tragic events played up the need for state police in
Nigeria. The Plateau State Governor, Jonah David Jang, observed that each time
trouble started, police reinforcements were often required and since he hasn’t
powers to mobilize a police contingent from other parts of the country, it was
the reason why succor often came late. Furthermore, the police command in his
Plateau State isn’t really answerable to him and where the President fails to
promptly give an urgently needed directive, it leads to regrettable damages. He
was motivated, by these realizations, to propose the idea of state police in
Nigeria. Support to his proposal was divided; northern governors and
legislators kicked against the proposal while their counterparts from the south
supported the proposal. Since the FG was not in support of the proposal, it did
not endure through the night to see the light of day.

Then the problem of Boko Haram surfaced and became a monster,
messing up the Nigerian nation direly. At a point, Shettima Mustapha, the
reigning Governor of Borno State, where Boko Haram is headquartered and largely
operates, was ignorantly blamed for his inability to end the bloody chaos. His
respond was that he hasn’t any control of the security apparatus in Nigeria:
the police and the military are all organs of the FG. Also the Ombatse problem in Nassarawa State broke
out and the Governor of Nassarawa State, Tanko Al-Makura was also berated for allowing
the recurrence of the unrest. His respond rhymed with the respond of his
counterpart from Borno State. Thus the true presence of a manpower vacuum in
the force led colleagues, who initially opposed Governor Jang, to subconsciously
gravitate to his position on the debate.

It is obvious that the FG’s refusal to support the idea of
state police is founded purely on the pedestal of morbid interest as the force
is often deployed to serve them, especially during elections when it is used to
bully political challengers. The significance of humanity must, however, be
stressed. The FG must see the damage the deficiency of manpower in the force
causes the nation and recruit the thousands of men and women needed to close
the manpower gap. On the reverse, it can legislate to allow states to own
police forces to guarantee effective policing of Nigeria.